Marty, and no one else....As the stomach churns,

I think you need a couple of firsts in competition, and weekend off with a good bottle of scotch and a handfull of condoms....lol

Here we go again: (This is cuttin' into my fishing time.)

First of all, excuse the assignment of the wrong dictator to Ethiopia. Strike out the madman of Entebbe and replace him with Mengistu, the madder man (is that possible?) of Addis Ababa. I am sticking to the rest of the story. The nationialization of agricultural lands, coupled with drought, led to the deaths of millions of Ethiopians while the nation's capital expenditure was utilized for military arms and equipment to fight a civil war on at least three fronts.

Marty, I am not going to trade demographics with you about the amounts and kinds of funds and the interest rates and terms and conditions of repayment. The funding is a moot point. Were there loans? Yes. Did the loans prevent the borrowing nations from breaking free of the confernal debt cycle? No! The loans to many emerging nations resulted in funds that were largely mis-used by those in power and seldom trickled down to the economy building for which they were granted. The borders of many African nations were laid out by the Europeans who divided up the dark continent between them. The mindless division of Africa's continental land mass was done by settlers and invaders who were ignorant of tribal boundries. The division was done with no regard for agreements between tribes, regardless of the consequences of that action. At the end of the colonial period, largely following WWII, the African "Nations" emerged with shiny new names and high ideals, only to be destroyed when centuries old tribal arguments were re-newed. Now it was one thing for a bunch of ethnic Africans to chuck spears at each other and flick a few arrows back and forth across a field of battle, and quite another when the spears and arrows were replaced with AK-47's and RPG's.

The center of Africa is rich with mineral and other resources. The West and Russia both coveted those resources and promised the hymen of first born daughters or whatever else was demanded in order to exploit the mineral wealth. Now, no one wants to trade a tub of tomatos or a crate of yams or corn and squash for bombs and bullets. The West and Russia convinced many African Nations to nationalize their agricultural lands and produce cotton and sisal and other trade goods at the expense of food crops. The long sub-Sahara guerilla wars placed a great burden on the nations involved. Monies were spent on arms and ammunition and the equipment to grow cash crops, and on high living standards for the ruling classes or cadres. As costs of battle increased and geography switched hands from group to group, frozen economies led to crop failures and, in many instances, using the cheaper weapons of disease and famine to punish the enemies of the state. Enter the bleeding hearts.

As pictures of the millions of sub-Saharan refugees flashed across the TV screens of the West, many new agencies sprang up to collect monies, food and drugs to aid the people who were starving and sick. Much of that aid ended up in the coffers of the already fat, controlling governments and cadres, and they simply allowed millions to die of malnutrition and disease. Now dead people and barren lands do not an economy fund, and consequently, in many cases, the money that should have been spent on repayment was either squirreled away by the ruling class, or long spent on the weapons of war.

Let me give you an example of how this scenario may have played out if, say you were Ethiopia or Country "X", and the World Bank was the Podunk, Iowa, Savings and Loan. You arrive in town with some degree of personal asset, let's say a pile of fine antique jewelry, and use that as collateral for a loan with which you purchase a home, car, boat and the finer accoutrements of middle America. You secure employment at a company in Podunk and begin earning a good living, and begin paying back your loans. One day, you find out that your boss is an Armenian. Let's say you hate Armenians, since one killed your great-grand-uncle seventy five years ago. Upon finding out that the employer is an "enemy", you beat him up and are fired. Returning home, you find your neighbor has driven a car across your fine green lawn. You get in your car and rip his lawn up and park just as your wife comes out and tells you that the Postman lost control of HIS truck and trashed your lawn, but it is OK, because the USPS is sending a check for twice what it costs to fix it.

Meanwhile your neighbor comes home, sees his lawn, goes ballistic and walks over and breaks both your arms. Now, you are unemployed and cannot work because you are in a body cast until all heals. You go to the bank and arrange to roll over your loan. The loan officer feels sorry for you because your arms are broken and you can't work, so he rolls over the loan and adds the interest to the principle. One week later, you find that the loan officer, too, is an Armenian. Outraged by the Armenian "conspiricy", you go to another bank and borrow more money to pay off the first loans. Since You are now short of funds, you borrow enough to pay the principle and the added interest, and an additional sum to tide you over until you can work once more. (Are you with me?) You get another job eventually, and by that time are behind several payments on the second series of loans. You talk the bank into rolling over those loans, once more adding interest. Now, lets say the new employer and the banker are Catholic, and so are you and that commonality has aided your cause. You come home one night and your wife tells you that she has promised a friend that you would go to a revival at the friend's Nazarene church. You go. You are swept up in the spirit of the new religion, eschew Catholicism and become Nazarene.

You are so adamant about the correctness of your new religion that you try to convert the new boss and the bank officer. They are both mad, and one fires you, the other calls your loan. You go home to get the family jewels to pay off the loan, and find that they have been stolen. Once again, you are in debt and unemployed. You cannot buy food. Your wife runs off with the Nazarene minister and your daughter gets pregnant. Your son is embarrassed to go to school and you decide that this is all the Armenian's fault. You shoot the Armenian. You go into hiding. Your loans do not get repaid. Your daughter joins the missing wife, and your son announces he has gone back to the Catholic faith. You are broke, heavily in debt and begin to blame others for your problems. The guy who stole your jewels has a change of heart and returns them. You take the jewels and leave for Bahama or Brazil. Your son has you pronounced dead in seven years, assumes the debts and then says the debt should be forgiven, since he cannot repay the amount owed due to the fact that the interest has accrued to a sum that is triple the principle. That, my friend is the rest of the story.

Poverty has worsened in the developing world, because the term "develop" is missing from the equation. The problems you outline are not the fault of the Western World, the IMF or the World Bank. They are the end result of a failure to manage and plan on the part of the sitting governments. At the end of WWII, Japan and Germany, along with China, Indonesia, Malaya and Indo China and the Phillipines were in desperate circumstance. Under the Marshal plan in Europe and the occupation council in Japan and the Asia Theater of Operations, billions of dollars of US aid were pumped into those shattered lands. Japan, a nation whose largest natural resource is the vagina, was contemplating cannibalism by 1945. Yet Japan and Malaysia and Indonesia and Singapore and to an extent, the Phillipines and all of Europe and lower Manhattan have rebounded to economic heights far exceeding the levels enjoyed prior to the War.

You mention the AIDS epidemic. That has become a rallying call for a zillion bleeding hearts. Let's look at the reality of that issue. How is AIDS transmitted? Right! Should one not think that folks in the high risk zones of East Africa might tender a change in their sexual habits? No. They haven't changed even after billions have been spent on treatment (As if the word "treatment" indicated a cure) and more billions spent on educational and awareness programs. Many wealthy Zaire and Keyan nationals (yes, there are such things) send their sons to India to study in the Calcutta and Bombay areas. The young men are told not to marry foreignors since they are obligated to wed members of their own tribe or culture. They are, however, encouraged to dwell in the laps of the numerous prostitutes in the cities where they attend University. The result? According to an associate of mine who is an AIDS researcher, the prostitutes in the Calcutta area are around 95% HIV positive. Wow! Let's see, what was it that caused AIDS again? Yup! Lemme ask you this: You can screw this fine young lass here for thirty minutes and die six years later, or you can keep it in your pants and live to be seventy or eighty....which will it be? I sure hope you voted for a locked down zipper. I don't know about you, but I have never had the hots for a mau mau princess, so their AIDS problem is their own to sort out. Let biology take it's course until they get the message about prevention.

The celebrities are a bunch of middle-of-the-road bell hops who got where they are by way of talent and the machine that drives the music business. They woke up one morning rich and not smarter for it. They do all that charity bit for public relations and tax deductions. I can't imagine the sum collective of entertainers having enough awareness to fold toilet paper. Have you really listened to those twisted bastards? Most are just a few bi-pedal steps away from Hairy the Ape. Can you imagine a conversation between a rock star and Einstein? C'mon.

Martin Luther King was a freak of the time. He has been lofted to a position of legend by a pile of guilt-driven white politicians. Who, by the way did he lead? Other than a few marches, he did diddley. He was a figurehead for a movement that was planned and executed by a host of much brighter individuals. I have read his speeches. He had good writers and a Southern Baptist delivery that moved the audience. He arrived on the right scene at the right time. Any one in the country who did as much as MLK? How about Ali, Jackie Robinson, Sammy Davis Junior....lol. Martin was a product of chance and necessity. He is living proof that with a little effort and some promotion, one can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

The problem with our world is that we have too much idle time on our hands. We run around trying to fix things that may best remain broken. Humankind is just another biological experiment gone awry. Perhaps there are cultures and societies who contribute so little to the course of human events that they are just developmental dead ends. I am not going to sit in judgement of those groups, but I don't see myself as a part of some lofty plan to "deliver" them from cesspools of their own design.

Perhaps you should shoulder a knapsack and join the Peace Corps and see these things first hand. Maybe you should find a way to travel as I have or go about the world trying to do business in foreign lands. You might enjoy seeing hijacked USAID goods being sold on black markets all around the globe, or people being worked to death to build trade goods for India so that her leaders can spend billions on a nuclear device while encouraging her young bright minds to leave the nation and settle overseas.

Personally, I am old enough that all I want to do is fish and enjoy my grandchildren. I can't do that as often as one might like, since I am still working in order to make enough money to pay taxes so that my Government has enough funds to educate a foreign doctor who will graduate and remain in my country, rather than return home and treat the ills of which you speak. Or maybe they need the money to pay for Isreal's self defense, or to pay for food given to hostile regimes.

My son is attending doctoral classes as we speak. He is a fine young man. His medical class has 27 students. Twenty three of them are foreign nationals. It sometimes seems that I spent eight years wearing the uniform of this nation and fighting in wars on two continents in order for my son to become a minority in his own country. And you don't think we are doing enough? That is a hell of a lot of college seats to be denied our own citizens in order to turn out a doctor who will never treat so much as a common cold in his or her own country. Marty, I have languished many hours and days about the ills of our planet. Many hours of my life and tens of thousands of dollars of my money has been spent waging war for a cleaner environment and to insure our wildlife heritage is around for my grandkids. Even though I am not now so acutely aware of the ills on this planet as I once was, I am still involved. Why I even think about those unfortunate folks abroad from time to time, and I think.......F**K 'em.

DEAR MR. CUR

while you're at your keyboard would you tell me if you use dry preservatives or do you tan skins?

please explaing the chemical components of both,bess made and lutan f!

thanks heaps, you're arab buddy

Food for the sower

This response submitted by Gordon C. on 10/13/01. ( ) 142.177.6.148

It has recently come to my understanding that their has never been a "famine" in a democratic country. The elected politicians can't stand the heat from opposition or citizens if thing start getting that way. It's a question of morality and value that motivates their behavior: to stop a famine. And, they what themselves or their political parties to get elected next round. I believe a British economist just recently won a noble prize for pointing such simple thing as this and other findings. He was originally from Pakistan, were he witnessed, as a child, first had famine. I can't recall his name and if I could I would give him the credit!

Dear (.) BOTH!

I use both DP (koraxum - borax) and tanning. I use DP on animals up to the size of fox, and tan the remainder. That is not tosay I haven't done a ton of DP mounts in the past, and see nothing wrong with DP processes when used properly on skins and capes that have been prepared well. I am familar with Lutan, but not the other product. I prefer to let professionals do my tanning, since I trust they are much better at it than I will ever become. I have used the Leukanol tan from Van Dykes often as a home tan. The Lutan F, Aluminum chloride tan is also one I have used. I also employ a setting compound of my own concoction on occassion, especially on small game mammals.

Read my lips. I am an artist, a painter and sculptor and taxidermist. I have never claimed to be a tanning expert, nor do I want to be. I am also a pretty fair mechanic, but not near as good as the one who works on my car.....lol

Thats all i got to say about that

This response submitted by "fibber" on 10/13/01. ( ) 209.215.181.117

Cur YOU need to go fishin, your fingers have got to be tired, the worlds ills will be here when you get back, promise, Lisa the Dot boys are ALL signed up, contact the Dot of your choice at your lesiure,....Marty, my friend you need a hobby to take your mind off such stuff, how about fishing, you could go with Cur, but beware his references to chum and slick might be references to using you for bait...lol....p.s. if you catch any of them mau mau think of ol Dot, or is that mahi mahi....

I don't think we are suppose to be on this post

The heading reads: Marty, and no one else! But, since I'm here....and you guys are always bringing me into all this stuff. Just sitting here minding my own dang business. lol

All of this reading is giving me a head ache, can't we go back to the good ole days? Good going Marty...Cur, what's this about Podunk, Iowa? I've never been there, is it pretty? I like to connect the dots, you end up with the neatest pictures. Just tell me when...Cur. Cuz, can't go fishing the water is too low they aren't bitt'in.

To any and/or all of the Dots......same offer to ya, if I can figure it out! lol How's the fishing?